Speaker

Dan Choffnes

Carthage College

Biology

262-551-2374

dchoffnes@carthage.edu

The Shoot Apical Meristem: A Plant's Fountain of Youth

Plants are unique among multicellular organisms in that
they can maintain growth of new tissues and organs
throughout their lifetimes – in some species, over the
course of hundreds or thousands of years. This remarkable
ability derives from a population of self-renewing cells in
the growing tip, known as the apical meristem. The
maintenance of this cell reservoir is controlled
genetically, and recent studies using the laboratory model
organism Arabidopsis have begun to shed light on the
mechanisms by which plants grow and develop over extended
periods.